We’ve seen actors branch out into all kinds of side careers, from rapping and banjoing to running an NFL franchise or a hamburger joint.

Chad Michael Murray – best known for making hearts throb on TV’s “One Tree Hill” and movies like “House of Wax” and “A Cinderella Story” – now adds “graphic novelist” to his resume’s job history with “Everlast,” a dark but spiritual tale about a hard-edged “soul-saver” in the days leading up to the apocalypse.

We geeked out with the amicable Buffalo, New York, native at October’s New York Comic-Con to cast the inevitable movie version.

So what inspired you to start writing graphic novels?

I can tell you that the story was inspired by a man who showed up on my doorstep, preaching about the end of the world, and he goes, “144,000 people are going to be let survive the End of Days. Do you want to be one of them?” And at that point I’m just like okay, I want to hear it. And it was really interesting. I heard this guy’s story and then I just kind of swallowed this idea and I went inside my house, and I just kind of contemplated it for a long time and thought, “What if it was true?”

Out of that I created Derek (Everlast), a soldier whose job it is to find people who are destined to survive the End of Days. And I just saw this as the greatest platform to launch it. It’s a really cool platform because you can do a little bit of everything with a little bit of ink. An incredible artist, obviously, can blow up your world for you, blow up a building instead of having to actually spend lots of production dollars, actually doing that, like some people.

J.J. Abrams is headed to the CW. In his first stint at the 5-year-old network, the top writer-producer-director has teamed up with Mark Schwahn, creator/executive producer/showrunner of the CW’s long-running drama One Tree Hill. The power pair has sold a hotel drama to the CW, which will instantly become one of the the network’s highest-profile projects this development season. Schwahn will write the show, tentatively titled Maine, which is set at an inn in Maine and revolves around the staff and the inn’s guests. Abrams and Schwahn will executive produce with Bryan Burk for Warner Bros. TV, Abrams’ studio-based Bad Robot and Schwahn’s Mastermind Laboratories. In scope, the character-based drama, which has received a script commitment, harks back to Schwahn’s OTH, which will end its nine-year run early next year, and Abrams’ Felicity. This also marks a homecoming of sorts for Abrams who started his TV career on the CW predecessor the WB with Felicity. For Schwahn, the project stems from a script deal with WBTV.

Trust us, we don’t like writing these types of articles. Especially when it has to do with One Tree Hill going off the air. We’re still not ready to admit this is the end, OK?!

But as you can tell from this OTH promo, a “favorite” will not survive the ninth and final season. Only thing left to do until the premiere (Jan. 11) is speculate on who’s biting the big one…

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We’ve rounded up 10 likely suspects who could get killed off, eliminating Haley because as shown in the promo, she’s there to identify the body. We’ve also chosen not to include the kids because, c’mon, even Mark Schwahn isn’t that evil.